


Phase 3 Trials, Newt and Minho (alternate version)

by Beliar, Vearth



Category: The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: The Death Cure, phase 3 trials
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-18
Updated: 2013-08-18
Packaged: 2017-12-23 22:40:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/931908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beliar/pseuds/Beliar, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vearth/pseuds/Vearth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>contains spoilers for The Death Cure (should only be read after the whole The Maze Runner series)</p>
<p>While Thomas was locked in a room and isolated to face the third face of the trials, Newt and Minho had to face their own and very different kind of trials.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Newt, Phase 3 Trial

Everything was dark around Newt when he woke up. Solid and pitch-black, almost alive and swirling around him, lay a thick wall of seemingly impenetrable darkness. It had only been a minute or two since he had regained consciousness and his eyes were still utterly and completely blind to his surroundings. He could hear his own breath loud and clear, rattling in his ears. It was the only sound in the place he was in. His heart was already racing and he was terrified of what was to come.  
No matter what it was, he didn't think it could be good.

Carefully he reached out and let his hand slide up the wall he was lying next to. His back had been pressed to it or he wouldn't have known it was there. His hand moved along a padded, soft surface with a swishing sound that tore through the darkness and drowned out the hasty, heavy intakes of breath and the shaky exhales.  
The floor felt just as the wall did and was definitely made of exactly the same material.  
The image of a padded cell in an asylum came to his mind but he couldn't tell where he had pulled it from or how he knew that there were cells like these made for people who were potentially going to hurt themselves.

Maybe he was trapped.

Newt shook his head. _I’m a bloody idiot_ , he thought and huffed. A bitter, gruff sound in the confined space he was in. Of course he was trapped.

If only he could see something.

It took less effort than he thought to sit up. He had no way of knowing how long he might have been asleep, but he didn't feel rested. His legs pulled close and up to his chest he blinked against the darkness and tried to make out anything around him when suddenly a bright light flickered into life right in front of him, just a few feet away.  
Newt hissed, shielding his eyes with his hand and turning his face away from the source of light in a fluid motion. He needed a few moments in which he had his eyes squeezed shut tightly, regretting that he had wished for light only a second earlier, before he could attempt to see anything. Bright white dots disturbed the darkness behind his eyelids and made him dizzy.  
When he opened his eyes again beneath the protecting cover of his hand, he did it slowly to make sure it would be bearable before he put his hand down and turned his head towards the light source.

It was still bright. Unnaturally bright. A single monitor, sitting in the wall opposite of him. There was no sound at all, just the black and white picture, flickering through the darkness and casting wavering shadows onto the white walls.  
At first Newt didn't know what he was looking at, because he had never seen it from this perspective. He squinted his eyes, his mouth dropped open and he felt terror creep into him like liquid oil, dripping in and moving fast until it filled him whole.  
It was him.  
He was climbing up a wall in the maze when he was supposed to run and he knew nobody would miss him for the next hours. The monstrous, gigantic walls that had meant nothing to him than entrapment. Still, he wasn't that far from the Glade. There had been no point in going far and exhausting himself. There had been no point in anything anymore.

Newt could only stare as he climbed the ivy in what must be a recording one of the beetle blades had made of him. It skittered over the wall, making the camera jiggle and bounce but never lose its focus on him, filming his slow ascent. He recalled the sounds of working machinery and the clicking of it’s feet on the wall, but there was still no sound.  
His breath hitched. He knew what would happen and he didn't want to watch it. His hands were wrapped tight around his own knees, palms sweaty and damp against the fabric, and his face contorted with terror.

The figure was turning around now, carefully and slowly, watching his every move so he wouldn't fall just yet. Newt remembered how his sweaty hands had almost slipped on the ivy at one point and he wished he couldn't.  
It was almost hilarious to him, watching himself, knowing his intentions and seeing how careful he had been.  
His eyes were opened wide, fixed on the flickering screen, imagining some scientist in his place while he was actually doing it. _They had been watching_. They had driven him to a point he thought killing himself was the only option and then they had watched. Recorded it. Saved it for rainy days.

He knew the small version of himself, hanging from the monstrous wall, was taking a few deep breaths to steady himself.  
He had been so sure it would work.

The recorded version of him suddenly let go of the ivy and leaned forward. The camera jiggled again as the beetle blade moved to capture his fall and Newt saw himself head towards the earth at a maddening pace. Seeing this he could once again not believe he had survived this.

Just as he hit the earth suddenly there was sound. A loud, sickening crunch, the sound of broken and shattered bone and Newt flinched, squeezed his eyes close and bowed his head forward.  
A loud scream of pure agony and then silence fell again.  
The source of the small hiccups and hitching breaths stayed cowered forward, head hung low until he realized the light didn't fade.

Newt wished the darkness would return.

 

After hours he almost got used to it. It was on loop and he had seen himself attempt suicide 56 times, but he had stopped counting after only a short while. They never showed how he got found and rescued before night fell and the grievers came out. This was a tape made entirely of his desperation, his failure and his pain.

It didn't stop and Newt couldn't sleep. He felt like he was going crazy. There was an itch at the back of his brain, inside his mind, a sudden urge to try and break the monitor to make it stop that felt foreign to him. It wasn't him who did things like that. He wanted to reach inside his skull and scratch until it was gone, but all he could do was try to ignore the only source of light he had.

 

The next day there was food. Three times in total, always the same. The only way to measure time was the little version of himself that tirelessly climbed the wall, let go and screamed. The sound remained just as much as the picture. It was always turned on when he hit the ground and turned off immediately after that.

Sometimes Newt looked over, trying to will this small version of himself to stop. It never did and he always looked away before he could witness himself hitting the ground again.

At some point he fell asleep and he dreamed of the slow ascent up the wall. In his dreams he could remember how hopeless he had felt, how desperate and empty and _old_. Nobody as young as him should feel this used up and hollow. He didn’t know how he knew that, but he was sure it was true. It was one of those things he could remember without having any memory of it. It was maddening how the barrier that held his past at bay worked.

He fell and yelled, jolting up to sit only seconds after one of his past versions had hit the ground on the monitor and yelled over the thundering crack of his own bone. He was gulping in huge breaths of air, almost choking on it. Sleep didn’t come again.

~*~

Something was different in the room now and before he had fallen asleep. His eyes fell onto a tray, the likes of which was used to get his food through a small hatch in the door.

There was no food on it. Something silvery lay where it usually used to be and Newt pulled himself to his feet, walking over with careful, hesitant steps as if he expected whatever was lying there to jump up and attack him.  
After everything he had been through it was a valid concern.

The silvery turned out to be a dagger, maybe ten inches long. It lay there accompanied by a note. Two simple words in huge, bold letters.

TRY AGAIN?

As if to back up the question the hidden speakers on the monitor cracked and sprang to life with the rustling of static, the sounds of his screams and broken bones filling the room.

Newt was breathing heavily, didn’t know if he had ever stopped doing it between waking up and discovering the dagger. A long moment passed in which he just stared down onto the tray and the shadows dancing over his surface, while he imagined doing what the note asked him to. He imagined taking the dagger and burying it deep in his chest, slowing the rabid pace of his heart to a slow stutter to silence.  
Peace.  
The thoughts were so similar to the thoughts he had when he had climbed the wall in the maze, but so many things had changed since that day.  
He had started to feel a hint of grateful for every day he could escape death and stay with his friends, even if he sometimes didn't know what for. Things weren't great. Living wasn't great. He was trapped in a room by the same people who had trapped him in a maze.  
After all that had happened, after the last failed attempt on his own life, he knew he couldn't do it. He had never been able to just stick a knife into his own chest and he couldn't risk failing again.

But more importantly, if he ever would try to kill himself again it wouldn't be because these people asked him to.

The expression in Newt’s eyes hardened considerably before he turned around and limped back to where he had sat before. He really hoped they were watching like they had been in the maze.

~*~

Another day passed, maybe two. Newt couldn't tell time anymore at all and he tried to ignore the monitor as good as he could. Every time he thought he could even ignore the screams and disturbing sounds, he felt like the sound got louder and louder every time it turned back on.

He ate, he walked around, he ignored the dagger and the recording, but the itch inside his mind didn't go away. It got worse.

The next day Newt got angry.

It was confusing, mainly because he didn't want to. He just felt drained and tired and furious beyond reason. Days had come and gone and all he ever heard were his own screams and cracking bones.  
Quick steps took him to where the dagger rested and he knelt down, his knees hitting the padded floor with a loud thud.  
It felt heavy in his hand. Heavy and cold and dangerous. He wrapped both his hands around the handle and took a deep breath to steady himself and when he stabbed out with it he put all the strength he had into the blow, intend on going through as far as he could.

The sharp blade tore through fabric and cotton easily but hit something hard and solid beneath it. A loud, metallic clang sounded through the room and the force of the impact and the sudden stop reverberated through his arms. It almost hurt, but it made him stop for a moment to reconsider what he was doing.

Newt wasn't sure what he had thought could lie beyond the soft padding of the wall, but he hadn't expected it to be solid metal that blocked his escape. He pulled the dagger out, seeing it had only vanished for about four inches before it hit metal and started slashing at the wall’s padding with renewed ferocity. He pulled out chunks of cotton between slashes, once almost hitting his own hand with the swirling blade. His own screams out of hidden speakers occasionally drowned out the grunts and sounds of effort. Sweat was trickling down his face and the back of his neck, but he only stopped when he could see the metal that lay beneath the padding through the hole he created.

It was almost the same color the dagger had and shone in the light that flickered over it’s surface every now and then. Newt stared at it before staring down at the weapon that had done all the damage to the wall. The weapon that tore through the soft padding so easily.  
There was no doubt left that he could kill himself with it. A quick stab just the way he had attacked the wall and it would all be over.

There was no clattering of metal, no sharp, loud sound, when the dagger landed in the far corner of the room. Just a soft thud, a scream of anguish, silence.

Newt went back to the place he had sat in most of the time and waited, rubbing his hurting hands on his legs. The next time he fell asleep and dreamed it was of Alby finding him out in the maze after he had jumped. One look at his friend’s face had shown him what a bad idea it had been to try what he had tried.  
He had almost left his friends, left Alby behind to fend for themselves. He had almost made their pain worse than it was already. If there had been any doubt left he could kill himself in this room it was gone the moment he woke up from the dream, feeling numb against the ongoing assault from the recording that was still playing. Finally even the most terrible thing he could remember happen to him had lost it’s terror.

He couldn't die while his friends needed him, no matter how long they would keep him in that room.

That day was the day the door opened for the first time since he had come here.


	2. Minho's Trial

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I started writing this before the Maze Runner Files were released, so Minho's trial is obviously different from the canon one. I figured I'll just publish it anyway.

Minho groaned and reached up to touch his head. It was pounding like he was recovering from being hit with a brick, but the pain spread through his entire skull which made it more likely that he was suffering the side effects of some kind of medication. He didn’t remember taking any, but sporadic memory loss had been his constant companion in the past two years, so it didn’t really shock him anymore. Looking around quickly, he realized that he was lying on a bed in a small white room that was absolutely foreign to him. There were no windows, only a closed door opposite of his bed and a small table with a glass of water on it.  
Spotting the clear liquid made Minho aware of how dry his throat felt, but he knew it would be better to figure out where he was first. The last thing he remembered was being in the big room with the others, getting food and drinks and having a little time to finally relax.. but what had happened afterwards? He must have fallen asleep, for he couldn’t remember anything after sitting down on the couch next to this Sonya girl from Group B.

He sat up, groaning again when his head started pulsating as if to protest against the movement. He was wearing white, clean clothes; everything from shirt to socks - the only thing missing were shoes.   
A sudden movement in the corner of the room made him flinch and look over. A beetle blade was climbing on the wall, the big letters forming WICKED on its back, just like with the ones Minho knew from the maze. So he was being watched.  
Big surprise.

There was nothing else in the room that hinted on any purpose of this; nothing that told Minho what to do or how to keep himself from dying of boredom. Boredom which came fast once he was awake.  
After getting up and walking through the room a couple of times, inspecting everything he could find, he lay back down and stared at the beetle blade that was now sitting right above him on the ceiling. He didn’t drink the water. Although he had taken WICKED’s food and drinks before, right now he decided it wasn’t worth the risk. God knows what they put in there.  
Less than an hour later, Minho was running and jumping through the room and on the bed in a desperate attempt to catch the beetle blade. It seemed like the only thing that could keep him from losing his mind, but unfortunately the little bugger was way too fast and agile for Minho and after fifteen minutes and a good amount of sweat on his skin later, he gave up.

Another hour passed before Minho couldn’t take it anymore. He jumped up from the bed he had sat down on again and got over to the door. His fists hammering against it produced an odd echoing sound in the small room that made him wonder what lie behind the door. “Hello?? Anyone out there? Let me out!” he yelled, knowing that someone must hear or see him anyway. Unless the beetle blade was projecting into an empty room or just recording for later.  
“I know you can hear me! Let me out of here! What am I supposed to do here? Hello??” Minho tried a few more times, but never got an answer. Nothing at all changed. The room remained silent, only filled with the crawling sounds of the beetle blade on the wall. Anger bubbled up in Minho. He couldn’t even tell how long he had been in here, but it was definitely too long. Not only was he bored out of his mind, he was also starting to worry about the others. Where had they put them? In similar rooms? Or somewhere worse?  
He had to get out of here.

It started out as wishful thinking, but after ten minutes of yelling and searching for another, possibly hidden, exit, Minho decided that he somehow had to get this door out of the way. And if it wasn’t going to step aside when he asked politely, he’d have to try something else.  
Minho didn’t know how hard or thick the door was, but when he hit his shoulder against it the first time he got the impression that it wasn’t quite as thick as he had feared. It vibrated under the violence of their collision and lifted Minho’s spirits by doing so.  
He rammed it again and again until his shoulder and side hurt, but he got encouraging splintering noises as reward. After two more hard kicks of Minho’s foot, the door finally gave in with a loud crack, shattering in parts and giving free a big hole in the middle that Minho almost fell through in his rush.

The room behind the door was almost even more disappointing than being unable to get through in the first place would have been. It was white and empty, like the other, except for a big monitor hanging at the wall to Minho’s right. It was showing a video, but there was no sound and the images were dark and ghostly greenish. Minho took a step closer and it took him a moment before he realized what he was looking at. A night-vision recording. He could see another room, much like the one he found himself in, possibly smaller, and a person sitting in front of a screen. There was movement on the little screen as well and Minho was surprised how clearly he could make out what was shown on it. It was a human – a young man, who seemed awfully familiar – climbing up a high stone wall covered in ivy before turning around and looking back down.   
A cold shock ran through Minho’s body once he realized what he was seeing. He knew those walls and he knew that guy.

“Newt..?” he mumbled at the screen, his eyes fixed at the scene before him. Newt leaned forward and even through the bad quality of the recording Minho could see how he was shaking. With horror he watched as Newt’s hands let go of the ivy and with a loud “No!” he breathed out the breath he hadn’t known he was holding while Newt fell to the ground like a bag of flour.  
Minho closed his eyes. He was still trying to cope with what he had just seen when another shock hit him as he remember that someone else was watching this with him. He tore his eyes away from the screen within the screen and looked at the person in front of the monitor. Minho’s breath hitched when he realized it was Newt again who he was seeing. Newt, sitting in front of a screen that showed him his own suicide attempt from more than a year ago.  
Anger started to grow inside Minho’s chest and he turned around, looking at the rest of the room he was in. There was nothing but white walls surrounding him and a small door inside one of them. It was closed – of course – and didn’t possess any windows either.

“What is this?! Some kind of sick game?? Why are you showing this to me?” he asked, yelling at no one in particular, but guessing that one way or another he would be heard. _Why are you showing this to him?_ he wanted to ask, but he wouldn’t get an answer to it either.  
Tearing his eyes back to the screen, Minho squinted them and focused on the ‘real’ Newt again. The one sitting in front of the monitor. From the corner of his eyes he could see that the recording of Newt’s suicide attempt had started all over again, showing him climbing up the wall in the maze. “You sick bastards..” Minho mumbled, clenching his teeth.  
Suddenly Newt (the one outside the recording) moved and looked over to something that was lying next to him. Minho hadn’t noticed it before but now that his attention was drawn to it, he recognized a small tray with something silvery and long on it. Instinctively getting closer to the monitor he fixed his eyes on it, trying to see what it was. A small gasp escaped him when the camera angle suddenly switched, showing a close up of the tray.  
The long silvery thing turned out to be a dagger, accompanied by a small note saying only two words: _Try Again?_  
Minho felt the blood rush from his face and his breath hitched in his throat. “No..” he whispered, watching with horror as Newt’s hand reached out, getting closer and closer to the tray before slowly wrapping his fingers around the knife.

„No!!“ Minho’s scream filled the room, sounding wrong and distorted to his own ears. The video of Newt started to flicker and Minho realized he had put his hands to the monitor, holding to it like it was his life belt in the open sea. “Newt!” he cried out again when the video finally disappeared for good, replaced by a black screen. “No..” The image of Newt sitting there and reaching for the dagger had burned itself into Minho’s mind. It kept playing back in a loop, making him ache for more of what he knew he wouldn’t get. Answers.

Was this a recording? Was it live? Was it.. _real_?

Before he could even think about yelling at thin air again, the screen came back to life. At first Minho thought he would see Newt again, but he realized soon that he had been mistaken. There was another room, white and padded like the one he had seen Newt in – only this time it was well lit and held no monitors. A person was sitting in the middle of it, her long black hair falling over most of her back and partly her shoulder. Minho could only guess that it was Teresa.  
Something about the way she moved – frantic and hasty – sent chills down Minho’s spine. He couldn’t see what she was doing, for whatever she held in front of her was blocked from the camera by her own body.  
Without realizing it, Minho crept closer to the monitor, as if he could trick it by turning to the side enough to look over Teresa’s shoulder.  
Minho flinched away from the monitor when a sudden static filled the room, coming out of invisible speakers somewhere above him. It was a nasty sound that went through his skull and bones and made him tense. It was only drowned out a little by the sound of his own racing heartbeat. When he focused back on the screen Teresa had stopped moving. Her shoulders were heaving and with a slow motion she moved her arm to the side. For a split second Minho caught a glimpse of her hand that seemed to be wet with a dark liquid that looked suspiciously like blood, even through the black and white transmission of Minho’s monitor.

The screen turned black again and Minho blinked for the first time in forever. His eyes were tearing up from being dried out like that. He let out a breath he didn’t know he had been holding, staring at the blackness, internally hoping that it was over now but also that he would see more of his friends. The static sound had vanished together with Teresa’s image before his eyes, leaving him with nothing but the unsteady _thump thump_ of his own heart in his ears.

Minho gasped when the screen flickered once again. For a short moment he thought he was looking at an empty room. It looked exactly like Teresa’s, maybe a little larger, with white everywhere and lights filling every little corner of the room. The only difference was a table in the middle of it. Once his brain had adjusted to the new image, he noticed a dark spot in one corner of the room. A person sitting there, almost melting into his surroundings because of the white clothes he was wearing. It was..  
“Thomas.” Minho let his hand slide from the frame of the monitor to the screen itself, his fingers slowly stroking over where his friend was huddling on the ground. The quality of the video was too bad to see if Thomas was awake or sleeping; or even dead or alive. “What the hell is-”  
“-going on?” A sudden voice behind Minho made him jump and turn around. A guy in a white suit was standing in front of him, a good two meters away, arms linked together behind his back and the usual serious expression on his face. Rat Man.

Minho opened his mouth but Rat Man made him shut up with an almost pleading hand gesture. “Please. Let me say something first,” he said, more stating than actually asking. Minho clenched his teeth, wanting nothing more than to ran at his guy and punch him until he didn’t move anymore.  
“You have been brought here for your final test. Phase 3 will be completed with this and all testing will be over. Like I promised.” Rat Man’s voice was calm and all business as usual. Looking at him alone enraged Minho to no extent. He didn’t care for this bullshit about testing and Phase 3. All his wishes to know what was happening to _him_ had vanished when he had seen his friends on the screen behind him. Without waiting for another word of Janson, he ran straight at him to tackle him to the ground and punch that stupid expression off his face.

But he never got there. Just like the last time Rat Man had appeared out of nowhere, an invisible barrier held Minho from reaching him. He ran into it with a forced that knocked him off his feet and the air out of his lungs. Minho coughed and groaned, his hand shooting up to his nose that felt like it was broken. Rat Man was standing as if nothing had ever happened and looked down at him with an almost annoyed look in his eyes.

Minho scrambled to his feet, trying to shake the pain in several parts of his body off and stepped closer to the Janson, this time holding his hand out until he touched the solid wall. He let his hand slide up and clench into a fist. Then he hit against the barrier, putting more strength into it than he could afford to. “What do you want? What are you doing?” he asked, his teeth gritted. He hit again and brought his second hand up to join the other. 

„WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO NEWT!? GET HIM OUT OF THERE, YOU ASSHOLES!“ Minho was almost startled by how loud his own voice sounded, but maybe the volume was just enhanced by the room’s structure. His hands hit the barrier over and over again with strangely quiet thumps, sending vibrations through it that made it visible for just a split second at a time. Rat Man opened his mouth to say something but Minho couldn’t hear him over his own enraged screaming and banging at the shield. He threw more insults at the other man, yelled something about Frypan, screamed for Thomas.

It filled him with an odd satisfaction when, through his rage, he noticed a hint of fear in Janson’s eyes, as if the man was wondering, for the first time, if these barriers, that he loved to hide behind so much, were actually as safe as they promised. They probably were, but maybe they hadn’t been tested against berserks like Minho yet.

The barrier held. No matter how long or hard Minho banged against it. When he finally stopped his hands were bloody and sore and Janson had taken a step away from him. A piercing pain was pulsating through Minho’s hands, as if his bones had splintered and were now trying to dig their way out of his flesh. The smeared blood on the barrier looked gruesome, hanging in the air like distorted, frozen leaves. Minho stumbled back a bit, sweaty and exhausted. He wanted to sit down and cry, but he wouldn’t give Rat Man the satisfaction of watching that happen. He hadn’t cried in a long time.

“Are you calm now?” Rat Man asked, causing Minho to clench his jaw. “Good,” he continued immediately, as if he was scared Minho would give the wrong reply if he gave him the chance. “I can imagine that you have a lot of questions, and I promise I will give you answers to.. well, some of them.” Minho opened his mouth to interrupt, but Janson didn’t give him the opportunity anymore.  
“First of all, you won’t be locked in here for much longer. This has almost come to an end. There is one last thing I have to ask of you.”

Minho huffed and shook his head. “Whatever it is, I am not doing it! Not until you tell me what is happening to Newt and Thomas and the others. Why did you show me that? Where are they?” he asked, agitation clear and strong in his voice. Janson took a deep breath and when he continued talking, none of what he did or said gave any hint on if he had heard Minho’s questions or not.

“To your left is a button on the floor,” he said, pointing with his hand to it. Minho turned his head and was surprised to see a big red button on the floor. Had it been there before? Had he overlooked it next to his discovery of the monitor?  
“And a clock up ahead,” Janson added, raising his hand a little to point at the wall. This had definitely not been there before. A large clock, set on 60:00 was hanging at the wall, a red light blinking at its lower right corner.  
“What is this supposed to-”  
“One of the other subjects.. one of your friends is in the room right next to you looking at an identical button and an identical clock on the wall – don’t bother punching the wall, we’ve seen what you can do, but this one is made of solid steel, so unless you want to break your hand, I suggest you leave it be. Here is the deal. When the clock hits 00:00, you have to make a decision. You can either push the button, or don’t push it.  
If you push the button, and the person in the other room doesn’t, you will die and their trial is over. If you don’t push the button and the person in the other room does, you will live and he or she will die, and your trial will be over. If you both push your buttons, you will both die. If none of you push their button, you will both die.” Rat Man made a short break to let the information sink in.  
“That’s it. You have one hour. Of course you can choose to get out of here instead, I am aware that you might manage..” Janson threw a frowning look at the hole in the other door that Minho had created a few minutes ago. “..but that would be a death sentence for your trial partner, so keep that in mind.”

With that he turned around and left the room, the glass barrier turning foggy once more before vanishing into thin air, revealing a now empty room. Minho didn’t hesitate and ran towards the door that was once more closed shut again. He didn’t hit any invisible barriers this time, but he didn’t have much success in opening the door either. His fists hurt from banging against it after a short while and eventually he realized that through the door was simply not his way out of this.

“Screw you!” Minho yelled after Rat Man, who was long gone, and kicked at the door, paying for it immediately with a sharp pain in his foot. Hissing and limping back to where the button sat on the floor he tried to calm down enough to remember the man’s words. He realized Rat Man hadn’t answered a single one of his questions.  
The test was cruel. Nothing but cruel and the longer Minho thought about it, the more helpless he started to feel. He maybe had a temper and was more than unpredictable at times, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew what kind of test this was. The kind that made him question the true nature of humanity, made him wonder if he could trust a single word Rat Man had said and one that seemed to exist solely for the purpose of presenting WICKED’s idea that charity or mercy were nothing but a death sentence.

How was he supposed to make this decision? This stupid, goddamn decision based on nothing but words of his so far biggest enemy and the wish to help someone who might not even be there. What if it was all a trick? What if there wasn’t even another button, or another person, or another room. Or what if it was a mechanism that worked the way Rat Man had said, but there was no other to take part in it and if Minho pushed the shuck button now, it would kill him and make him despair over not knowing if he died for nothing or at least saved someone’s life in his last moments on earth. Well, that suddenly sounded exactly like something WICKED would want - just another Variable that would do things to Minho’s head that he couldn’t even understand.

How was he supposed to think about this stupid test when pictures of his friends were floating through his head, tormenting him? Pictures of Thomas on the floor, Newt staring at that blade as if it meant the only way out, Teresa doing god knows what..

Was Teresa even his friend? Did it matter?

A dark thought crossed his mind and made Minho shiver. He would push the button to save his friends anytime, but would he do it for someone who wasn’t his friend? Could he willingly bet with someone else’s life? Minho bit his lip, wondering if WICKED had put these kind of things into his head or if they had been there all along.  
Hastily Minho turned around and looked back at the monitor, expecting to see someone else of his friends or maybe of Group B, but the screen was black. He cursed silently and closed his eyes for a moment. He couldn’t remember seeing any buttons in the others’ rooms, but that didn’t mean anything. He hadn’t noticed the one in this room before either.

 

The clock above him was counting down mercilessly, not caring about his internal fight. Minho finally sat down in front of the button, trying to calm himself while going through Janson’s words in his head again. Absently he brought his shaking hands together, hissing at the sudden rush of pain.  
This wasn’t a challenge he could win. This was chance. He would either die or not, but nothing he could do would guarantee the one or the other. “Shuck this,” Minho mumbled while staring at the big red button before him, as if it had declared itself as his new mortal enemy.

He didn’t want to die. Not here, not after everything. But both pushing or not pushing could lead to his death as well as the death of someone else. Did he even want to live, knowing that his life was bought with that of someone else? Would knowing what the other person was going to do help his decision? Would knowing who the other person was?  
Minho was not convinced of the true and good nature of human beings – Janson and actually the entire crew of WICKED was a good example to prove that – but he didn’t think everyone was necessarily evil at the core either.

What he _did_ know was that every single one of the Gladers that had left the maze with him and fought their way through the Scorch City had a very strong urge to survive. (At any cost?) But this didn’t exactly help with his decision.   
If the other person didn’t push, then he would die and they would live. Speculating that the other person wouldn’t push their button and mirroring that wasn’t helping either, because if they both didn’t do it, they would both die as well.

Screw this.

“Are you having fun? Is it nice to do this to people? I hope you are enjoying yourselves, you shuckfaced-” Minho’s hate tirade was interrupted by a sudden and loud noise that made him jump. The clock had hit half time, counting down from 30:00 now. He groaned. WICKED had found a way of trapping him in a no-win situation. In any other scenario his answer would have been to do the exact opposite of what WICKED wanted from him, but now? Now they had given him a problem that made every single move he made seem like something WICKED was anticipating and regulating. This probably bugged Minho more than anything. More than his helplessness, more than impending death. He was out of the maze but still nothing more than a piece in their little game of chess.

A strange silence filled the room that Minho only noticed after a while. The clock was digital, not making any noise since the loud buzz at half time. There were still 23 minutes left and Minho was starting to get nervous. He had thought every option through multiple times by now and still he had no clue what to do when the hour was over. He couldn’t sentence one of his friends to death, but he didn’t want to die either.   
He had never more felt like the classical lab rat running around and pushing buttons. With a sigh he let himself fall back until he was lying on the floor, staring up at the ceiling. Something about the room was strange; bizarre like the Glade had been. It was white and very light, yet Minho couldn’t locate the source of the light. It was as if the walls themselves were gleaming evenly, but when he stared directly at them they seemed like normal walls.

His mind wandered back to the pictures he had seen on the screen before Rat Man had shown up. The way Thomas had huddled there, lost or scared - or maybe hurt - , made Minho’s heart beat faster with anxiety. Where was Thomas? What had they done to him – or were still doing to him?  
And Newt.. Minho closed his eyes, trying to shut out the horrible thoughts that tried to claw their way inside his head when he remembered the dagger and Newt’s hand slowly reaching for it..  
He wouldn’t do it, would he? Here? Like this? On their command?

Minho had not been with Alby the night he had found Newt in the maze, but he knew all about it. Or, well, enough. Newt had tried to take his life before, he hadn’t managed to do so but he had gone through with it nonetheless. What if he was desperate enough to do it again? What if his hopelessness was bigger than his defiance? What if they had found a way of making him obey? Minho for one knew that he would do _anything_ with that dagger except killing himself if they had put him in Newt’s position. But then again, wasn’t he in a suicide situation right now himself?

~+~

Minho stared at the clock and swallowed hard. 13:00 it said, still counting down mercilessly. He was starting to shake, scared of what would happen once the clock hit zero. He was scared of whatever might come to end his life, but he was almost even more scared of the possibility that nothing would happen at all. That his actions would sentence someone to death while he survived; because he had done something wrong or the whole thing had been a trap of some sort.

In a sudden rush of anger paired with fear he jumped up and ran back to the door, lifting his fists to hammer against it. “Hey!! Come back here! Stop this! I would push the button, okay?! Nobody has to die! You have your answer, just let us out of here!” he yelled, not knowing if his voice could even be heard from the outside. “Rat M- Janson!” he went on. “Come on!! Let’s keep this hypothetical! You know I’m not lying! I’d push the button!”

After two more minutes of fruitless punching and kicking the door Minho made a step back and let his shoulders drop. He was breathing heavier than before from the yelling and the physical effort of hitting the door and his throat felt a little sore from crying so loud. Nobody opened, nobody replied. The door remained closed and the clock was left as Minho’s only company, slowly counting down from 8:20 now.

Minho got his hands up into his hair, grabbing it and tugging it out of frustration. He walked back over to the button, staring down at it before fixing his eyes on the clock at the wall. He was still immersed in absolute silence and yet watching the numbers fall created the illusion of a ticking sound in his head. It sounded more like a time bomb than a regular clock to him though.

He was weighing his options when deep down he knew he really only had one. Push the button. If he didn’t, his chances to survive were at 50%. If he did push, he was dead but whoever sat in front of the other button would at least have a chance to live. He had to try. It was the only right thing to do. Even if it meant giving up, losing the half life he had, the only thing he could really call his own. Or maybe he actually couldn’t.

Minho’s eyes wandered over to the monitor again, but it didn’t show any of the others anymore. His body started to shake and he could feel his heart beat faster. He didn’t want to die, not like this. In the maze he had been close to death quite a few times, but he had always had a fair chance. Now all he could do was wait and watch the clock on the wall literally count down the last remaining minutes of his life. He felt like crying, but he held back the tears that were burning in his eyes. He still didn’t want to give them the joy of watching him break down on top of everything.

The buzzing sound returned when the clock hit the last ten seconds. Minho swallowed hard, watching the numbers drop suddenly so much faster. 8. He kneeled down in front of the button. 5. Reached out with a shaky hand and put it on top of it, without any pressure yet. 3. 2.

1..

Minho pushed and closed his eyes. He didn’t know what to expect. Someone shooting him? Knives coming out of the floor to slice him up? Or maybe some device ripping him apart that was already inside his body?

What he certainly didn’t expect was nothing happening at all.

He opened his eyes again. The clock was still showing 00:00 in blinking red letters, the button in front of him remained pushed into its socket. Within a split second Minho’s heartbeat doubled in speed. What had happened? Why was he still alive?  
Had he made a mistake? Had he misunderstood Rat Man’s rules for this sick game and accidentally done the wrong thing?

Or had it really all been nothing but a trick, to get him into the right mindset without actually putting his life in danger? After all the talk about variables and candidates and the cure it seemed odd that WICKED would waste their subjects on little tests like this one. Maybe getting him into this dilemma and watching him suffer had been enough for them.

A sudden noise above his head interrupted Minho’s line of thoughts. It was quiet, almost unnoticeable, like caps of bottles being opened. He looked up, searching for the source of the noise and noticed a number of thin pipes emerging from the ceiling, six or seven in number. The seconds before anything else happened were pure torture. It wasn’t hot in the room and yet Minho felt sweat drip down his forehead and run down his neck. Just when he thought he couldn’t take the anxiety any longer the pipes stopped and slowly, like skeleton fingers digging their way out of a grave, greenish smoke started pulsing out of the openings.

Minho jumped up and stumbled back until he hit the wall. He had been mistaken. This was _not_ a trick and he _had_ followed the rules correctly.

He was going to die.

The smoke-like substance flooded into the room faster than he had expected and it lost its color once it was out of range of the pipes, making it impossible for Minho to tell how far it had come already. He knew that it was toxic, although he couldn’t tell where he had gotten this knowledge from. Without hesitating longer he pulled his shirt over his head and held it in front of his face, covering his mouth and nose, but knowing that it wouldn’t help much if the toxin would continue to spread so fast.

There was no way of physically escaping the toxin. The door Rat Man had left through was still locked and Minho knew it was a waste of time and breath to try and open it again. It wouldn’t give in, in the short time he had left.  
Doing the only thing he could think of, he ran back to the door he had smashed through earlier and crawled through the hole, back into the small room with the bed and the glass of water on the table that still waited for him as if nothing ever happened.

Minho looked around, panic lying in his every movement, but didn’t see anything that could help him to block the hole in the door. The quiet sound of the toxin streaming out of the pipes had followed him and in his fear he thought he could feel the air around him grow sour and hot.

Breathing frantically, but still trying to calm down, he got down on the floor and crawled into the corner of the room that was farthest from the door. The wall was cold on his naked back but he was still sweating from anxiety and exhaustion.  
All sorts of thoughts shot through Minho’s head while he sat there, instinctively pressing his back against the wall as if he was hoping he could somehow melt into it. He was scared for his life, scared for his friends, confused about the purpose of all this, wondering if this had been the plan for him all along.

After a minute or so, breathing became harder and harder. The cloth in front of his mouth had gained a bitter taste and Minho knew it was more than pointless to still press it to his face, so he dropped it.   
He felt his legs get weak and soon after his arms, making him slide down the wall with no energy left to hold himself up in a sitting position. His vision was starting to blur and his chest felt like someone had put an iron cage around it to keep him from breathing. Minho tried to catch the last bit of air with short, broken gasps, clinging to life and consciousness with all his strength, but eventually everything started to fade.

This was it. He was dying.  
He had solved the Maze, survived the Scorch City and now died on the floor of some government facility like the lab rat he had been all his life. His eyes fluttered shut and his head hit the ground with a soft thud.

Then the world turned black.

~+~

When he woke up again, he was lying in a big room, much like the one he remembered from the one they had put them in after the fake rescue from the Maze. He felt weak but surprisingly well-rested, no headaches or biting hunger pestering him this time.  
Minho shot up, suddenly wide awake. He was not alone in the room; many familiar faces were surrounding him. He saw Frypan, Teresa, Harriet and-

“Newt!” he called out, jumping off the bed and running over to his friend. In retrospect anyone would have found it weird to be hugged by a nothing but underwear wearing Minho who had literally just woken up, but at the time Minho was almost hurt by Newt’s grumpy reaction.

“Man, it’s good to see you..” he mumbled while letting to of Newt who was squirming out of his hug with a deep frown on his face. “What’s your bloody problem? Keep that for Thomas,” he said.  
Minho chuckled, relief washing over him like a soft summer breeze. “Yeah right..” he said, turning away from Newt to look around, his expression suddenly turning from amused to concerned within seconds.

“Where /is/ Thomas?”


End file.
